


seasons don't fear the reaper, nor do the wind, the sun or the rain

by readergirl1013



Series: just kiss off into the air [6]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Dead People, Gen, Ghosts, Gun Violence, Heaven & Hell, Hurt Klaus Hargreeves, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Major Character Injury, Pansexual Klaus Hargreeves, Sober Klaus Hargreeves, Talking To Dead People, mostly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:34:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23356267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/readergirl1013/pseuds/readergirl1013
Summary: Except the one ghost whose story he wanted to know more than any other, the one ghost he wanted to talk to and ask questions of, and hold close to him… he’d never seen her.He’dneverseen Vanya.What the f*ck good was it to be able to talk to the dead if he couldn’t even see his dead sister one more time?He’d thought about writing her story more than once... except she’d had enough of her life stolen from her by dear old Dad that he didn’t want to take anything else away from her. Even writing it from his point of view felt like he was taking something away from her.
Relationships: Dave & Klaus Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves & God, Klaus Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves
Series: just kiss off into the air [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1373497
Comments: 26
Kudos: 368





	seasons don't fear the reaper, nor do the wind, the sun or the rain

seasons don't fear the reaper, nor do the wind, the sun or the rain

Klaus stared down at what was going to be the opening line of his newest book and closed his eyes, resting his head on the desk.

“You’re kidding, right? You’ve got, like, two dozen words.”

Klaus opened one eye to glare at Carrie. She’d been following him around for years now, a kid who’d been raped and murdered at the grand old age of seventeen back in the mid-nineties. She’d shown up when he’d been about to go down the same alley she’d been murdered in when  _ he  _ was seventeen and freshly run away from dear old Dad, looking to score a hit. She’d given him a warning that a drug deal was about to go bad in that alley, followed him as he fled the area when shots started being fired and had stuck around ever since. 

He’d never quite figured out why she hadn’t gone on to whatever came after ghostdom, but he’d never wanted to ask either. He was too grateful for her presence to question it when she said she stayed around him because everything else was ‘boring and shit’. He was pretty sure Carrie was the only reason he was still alive, sane, and clean (well, except for weed. Weed didn’t count.)

“You look like a moron,” she told him, leaning on the edge of his desk. “I mean, even stupider than that time you thought pink eyeliner and green eyeshadow would be an awesome look.”

“Shh,” Klaus hissed at her, flapping his hands at her to silence her. “We do not speak of that look!”

“Ah, hell no, I’ll speak of it all I want. Not like there’s anyone to hear me other than Dave. And Dave agrees with me, right Dave?”

“Sure do, sweetheart,” Dave laughed. He always treated Carrie like that, like a daughter or little sister or something. “He looked too funny not to talk about it forever.”

Dave had been a soldier in Vietnam and was Klaus’s oldest ghost and another constant companion, although he’d never explained why. He’d shown up one day when Klaus was fourteen and in the mausoleum and stood guard to keep the more violent ghosts away. And then he’d just... kept on doing so. He'd protected Klaus from the worst ghosts ever since. Yet, any questions put to him about ‘why’ just had him shaking his head with a smile. The only time he’d ever said more than that was the first time Klaus had asked as a scared kid; even then all he’d said was that Klaus reminded him of a soldier he’d known back in ‘Nam.

Klaus had adamantly insisted Dave was crazy because he was in no way cut out to be a soldier, at the time. He still thought that now. He wasn’t brave  _ or  _ strong, not like Luther was. Dave had just laughed and said none of them were, that’s what the draft did.

He’d never shared more of his story, not like Carrie. In fact, Carrie’s story had been the inspiration for his first book. Her life and death had read like a horror novel, he’d mentioned to her one day as she told him about it while he was mopping floors at some shitty diner to make enough money for the rent on his rat-trap and hopefully have enough leftover to eat and buy something to get high off of. Saying that she’d been pleased by his (admittedly insensitive) statement had been an understatement.

Carrie was a huge horror movie and novel fan. Hell, she even adored the fact that her name, Carolina, could be shortened to Carrie because of the Stephen King story. The little weirdo had insisted he write her story as though it  _ was  _ a horror novel and then strong-armed him (read: pouted and whined) until he submitted it to a publishing house.

Imagine his shock when a month later he was offered a contract with the publishing house. Three months after that his book hit the shelves and was selling like hotcakes amongst the horror fan community.

Carrie had been delighted.

Klaus had groaned because the publishing house had been pushing for a second book and complained, “What am I supposed to write about? Dave’s not talking and it’s not like there are ghosts all over dying to have their stories told, Care Bear!”

(He might have, just a little bit, deserved the flat look and the, “Wow, you’re a bigger moron than I thought,” from Carrie. Just a teensy-weensy bit.)

So he’d had Carrie and Dave track down some other ghosts (who actually had enough of themselves left to do more than wail and scream and demand he get vengeance for them even though they’d been dead since 1824) they knew of to write their stories and somehow he’d made a career as a wildly popular young adult horror writer. Who knew?

Except.

Except the one ghost whose story he wanted to know more than any other, the one ghost he wanted to talk to and ask questions of, and hold close to him… he’d never seen her.

_ He’d  _ _ never _ _ seen Vanya. _

What the fuck good was it to be able to talk to the dead if he couldn’t even see his dead sister one more time? 

He’d thought about writing her story more than once... except she’d had enough of her life stolen from her by dear old Dad that he didn’t want to take anything else away from her. Even writing it from his point of view felt like he was taking something away from her.

And then Allison had gotten that guest spot as a suicidal inmate on  _ Orange is the New Black _ . 

(He’d loved that show, he could not even explain how psyched he’d been that Allison was going to be in it. Until he’d heard she was going to kill herself in her final episode which... No. Hard pass. Too close to home. He wasn’t watching another sister commit suicide, not even pretend suicide, not for anything. He hadn’t watched any of that season or the new one Netflix had just dropped.)

After the guest spot, Allison had started on this whole suicide prevention kick. It began with her bringing some person from one of those organizations with her to the Emmys, climaxed in her having a breakdown on Ellen and taking a sabbatical for a couple of months, and concluded in her becoming the spokesperson for pretty much every mental health slash suicide prevention organization ever.

Which,  _ awesome _ , he totally supported her doing that. Anything to keep more kids from killing themselves. Most of his siblings had their own side projects going on to help prevent suicide and bring awareness to the problem. Which, kudos to them,  _ seriously _ !

But that raised the question: just what the fuck was  _ Klaus  _ doing to keep more kids from killing themselves? 

He wrote  _ horror novels _ . It wasn’t exactly happy-happy, joy-joy fare to bring the spirits up. 

Sure, Carrie and Dave told him that he didn’t have to do anything, specifically. He could just be there if a fan wrote or reached out to him or whatever because he couldn’t base his life around Vanya’s death. 

But, well, Klaus was a medium. His life was  _ literally  _ all about death. And he wrote stories about the dead for a living. 

Why not make his sister’s story front and center?

So he’d decided to give it a go. So far he’d been working on it for three weeks and all he had was twenty-seven words:

_ My sister died in borrowed clothes because she never had anything to call her own. When I think of her that’s always the first thing I remember. _

It was true. 

Vanya had died in borrowed clothes. Allison’s pants and shoes, his shirt, Ben’s hoodie. Even her violin wasn’t hers, as they’d found out after she’d died. 

It was Dad’s. 

He’d just let her use it and had apparently been glad to get it back. That had been his biggest concern following Vanya’s suicide, actually. Making sure his precious  _ violin  _ was alright. Not mourning his  _ daughter  _ or the fact he’d never see her or hear her beautiful music again. 

Lovely man, their father.

They’d been seventeen when he’d learned the violin had only been loaned to Vanya. Dad had overheard Ben and him mourning Vanya as the anniversary of her death had approached. During his ensuing lecture on useless sentimentality, he’d said he’d been planning to take Vanya’s violin away from her. Because: “Number Seven was proving to be as useless at the violin as she was at everything else, she couldn’t even properly play Paganini’s Caprices you know.”

Klaus had been so blindingly angry that he’d  _ punched Dad in the face _ when he had said that. 

Because that violin had been Vanya’s only joy in life; she’d been absolutely amazing with it. If she’d known he was going to take it? If she’d feared that her one bit of happiness was going to be removed... Dad might as well have killed her himself. 

Klaus had left that same day. Walked out the door and never looked back.

The streets would be better than that house, he’d been sure. (He was right. They had been better.) He knew he wouldn’t have been able to last the month until his eighteenth birthday under the same roof as Reginald Hargreeves without killing him after that revelation.

Because fuck him.

Klaus looked at what he’d written:  _ My sister died in borrowed clothes because she never had anything to call her own. When I think of her that’s always the first thing I remember. _

Then he took a hit off the joint in his hand and added another sentence:

_ Because of fucking Reginald Hargreeves. _

There. He now had a total of thirty-two words.

He groaned again and slumped back over.

Dave patted the air above his hand. “There, there, sugar. It’ll come to you.”

“Or you could try another seance to see if she shows up this time,” Carrie suggested, sounding bored as she studied her nails. They were blue, currently. They’d had a nail party last week where Klaus had made the two of them solid to have some fun. She pointed out, “It’s been a couple of years since your last try. Also, I want my nails purple next and do you think you have enough juice in you that I can dye my hair?”

“I guess,” he muttered. He tried to think of an alternative before sighing. “Yeah, we’ll get the quick dye stuff since it takes about 30 minutes and that’s my limit. We can do it later this week?”

“What color do you want to dye it? You’re such a pretty girl, I hope you don’t dye it anything too crazy,” Dave asked, sounding both ridiculously old fashioned and parental. Well, Klaus thought it was parental, that’s what TV dads would say.

Klaus wished he’d had a TV dad instead of his own.

“Man, I wish that dad from  _ Boy Meets World _ or the one from  _ Fresh Prince _ was my dad,” he said wistfully. “Or Tim Allen. Ooh, or Danny Tanner. No, Uncle Jesse! He can _ be my Daddy _ any day.” Klaus meditated on the thought of Uncle Jesse for a moment, that man was seriously hot.

Carrie recognized the references, having died in the nineties, and wrinkled her nose. “Ugh, stop ruining my childhood, you creep.”

“What?” Dave asked, utterly confused, like the ancient fifties kid he’d been.

“Huh, oh, I was thinking you sounded like a total Dad, Dave,” Klaus explained.

Carrie rolled her eyes mightily and huffed. “He’s old enough to be one. Hell, you are too, old man.”

“Hey!” Klaus protested. “I am not old, I’m only twenty-seven!” 

Suddenly, his words struck him. He fell silent, his mouth falling open slightly and joint falling from his hand and going out. 

“Oh God, I’m twenty-seven. I’m old. Soon I’ll be thirty. I’ll be all wrinkled, and gray, and ugly! No one will ever love me!” he said, increasingly loudly with each word.

“There, there,” Carrie said condescendingly. 

Dave fluttered about a bit more uncertainly. “It won’t be so bad! Being gray would be nice, you know! I’d have loved to grow old and get gray!”

“Dave, how old were you when you died?” Klaus seized his shirt in his hands after expelling a quick burst of power to make him solid. 

He had a brief moment of thought to be thankful for the fact that Dave was no longer in his bloodstained uniform but had long since changed clothes thanks to Klaus making him solid. Now he was dressed in a dorky button-up and jeans with converses. (At least he and Carrie had convinced him not to get the chinos and dress shoes.)

“Uh, twenty-six,” Dave winced.

Klaus collapsed backward dramatically, falling out of his chair with a wail of dismay. “I’M ANCIENT!”

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” his neighbor hollered back.

Klaus, of course, couldn’t help himself and responded with a vehement, “NO, YOU SHUT UP, FUCKWAD!”

His neighbor proceeded to bang on the wall loudly.

“FUCK OFF!” Klaus bellowed back in response. “God, what a douchebag,” he muttered to himself (and Dave and Carrie) and rolled his eyes as the banging ceased. 

Then he looked up at his ghosts. “Well, that settles it. I’ll just have to get some hard drugs instead of my usual pot and die of an overdose this year so I can join the 27 Club. Then I’ll be young and cool forever alongside Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, and Amy Winehouse. I’m thinking speedball, that’s traditional. Opinions?”

“Red bull, alcohol, and Xanax,” Carrie offered cheerfully as Dave scolded, “Klaus!” Then he registered what Carrie had said and exclaimed, “Carrie!”

Klaus snickered and lay down on the floor, one hand worrying at the locket he always wore. 

His laughter died out as his door was kicked in. His neighbor, an asshole ‘roid rager who made his living modeling his muscles, was looming in the doorway. (Klaus thought his name might be Jeremy? Joey? Jamie? Maybe Jenny?)

“Klaus, he has a gun,” Carrie sounded terrified. “You have to get out of here, Klaus, run!”

“Stay calm,” Dave seemed to be a little more level headed. “Try and talk him down but if it looks like he’s about to shoot dive out of the way behind the couch.”

Klaus raised his hands. “Hey, look, man,” he started to say.

His neighbor pulled the trigger. Klaus shrieked and did his best to dive behind the couch, but it had been years since he’d needed to dodge bullets and he was out of practice and high. Besides, only in movies and books did a person sober up when there was danger. In real life, drugs kept on impairing you, no matter how much adrenaline pumped through your system and made you  _ feel  _ like you were clear-headed. 

And because of those factors, Klaus hadn’t moved fast enough. He felt one bullet hit him in the leg and another in his side.

“Fuck,” he swore lowly. His neighbor started ranting about something as another round of bullets came flying at the couch and he flattened himself to the floor and did his best to curl up in a ball.

Of course, that sent white-hot heat spearing through his chest and his leg. 

Once his vision had cleared, Klaus chanced a look down and felt distinctly queasy. His leg was bleeding sluggishly and probably wasn’t too bad a hit, but his side…

“That’s… Klaus,” Dave said, tone mournful. “It’s a bad hit.”

“Oh God, oh God, oh God,” Carrie whispered horrified. She had ducked behind the couch with him and was staring in horror at his side. She started sobbing. “No, you can’t die too, Klaus.”

Klaus ignored them. His hearing felt off anyway like he was underwater. He slowly raised and pressed a hand to what was left of his side. The front of him wasn’t too bad, where the bullet had entered, but the back of him had a massive hole in it. What the fuck kind of bullets had his neighbor used? 

He felt tired. Blood loss, he was sure. God, he’d been joking, he didn’t actually want to join the 27 Club. He didn’t want to  _ die _ . Not now.

“Klaus!” Carrie shrieked. “Open your eyes! Klaus!”

He lifted his head to look at her. He blinked slowly at her. “Care Bear?” he asked hoarsely. “Wuzzron?”

“Stay awake, Klaus,” Dave said calmly. “Help is on the way. Do you hear the sirens? The police are almost here.”

“Two,” Klaus whispered. He was so tired.

“Yes, your brother’s coming,” Dave said, still in that same calm voice. 

It was soothing. Klaus could fall asleep to that voice.

“Klaus! Stay awake, c’mon! You- you have to be okay!” Carrie begged, “Please! I can’t be alone again.”

Carrie was crying. She wasn’t supposed to cry.

He could just make out her shape through his eyelashes as her words registered distantly. He didn’t want her to be alone either. Or Dave.

Dave.

“D’v,” he slurred, “D’v.”

“I’m here, Klaus,” Dave said. His voice sounded funny. It wasn’t calm anymore.

“T’k c’r C’rrie,” he managed to get out, wondering who Klaus was. 

Was he supposed to be Klaus? How silly. He was Number Four.

Two people were crying, but Four couldn’t remember who anymore. Four tried to open his eyes to see who was crying, but he couldn’t manage it.

A man sounded so sad as he said, “I will, Klaus, I will. But you hold on! Klaus! Klaus!”

A girl let out a wail of anguish as a man started to sob. Four shut his eyes and let go. He hoped whoever Klaus was would be okay. He sounded like he had people who’d miss…

  
  


He woke up confused about where he was. That wasn’t particularly unusual. Klaus was well aware he slept around.  _ A lot _ . Waking up in strangers' apartments and hotel rooms was nothing new or unusual.

What was unusual was that he was outside, there was shitty accordion music playing nearby, and the world seemed to have decided black and white was better than color.

What the fuck.

Klaus stood up, looked around, and sighed. Typical.

Well, no, not really. But he supposed this had to be Hell. Where else would be creepy enough that you were all alone with the sun shining above and a gorgeous field of flowers that seemed to go on forever around you... except there were no colors or smells and the only sound was that of an accordion playing folk music from nowhere. No, wait, there were some birds tweet-a-leeting away, too. 

They were probably there to shit on your head whenever you thought you might finally escape Hell or something. God (or maybe he should swear by Satan’s name now?), it was like some sort of hellish reversed  _ Wizard of Oz _ or some shit like that.

He looked around some more and noticed a young girl biking toward him on a path that had suddenly appeared. He waved, ignoring the magically appearing path, just thankful he wasn’t all alone in hell. “Oh! Yoo-hoo!”

He really hoped she was nice. He tolerated kids and teens - his books were marketed to the ‘young adult’ market so he’d learned to quickly - but he didn’t know how to really deal with them for more than the time it took to ask their name, smile politely and have a five-minute maximum conversation, and then sign whatever page of their book they wanted. 

He could tolerate Carrie, but he’d known her since they were basically the same age. She was his best friend! Also, a ghost. He could handle ghosts.

“Hello,” he greeted as she came to a stop in front of him, trying not to seem scary while knowing he towered over her.

“Almost didn’t see you,” she replied, cool as a cucumber. “Keep on riding around here. So pale and all.”

“Hmm,” Klaus hummed, eyes wide in surprise at the smartassery. He might like this girl if she stopped insulting him.

“They don’t have any sun, down there?” her voice was perfectly level, as though she wasn’t mocking him.

Wait. “Down there?” He was confused now. Wasn’t this Hell? “Where am I?”

“Where do you think?”

“I’m not sure,” he hesitated, now completely confused. Was this hell or did he somehow make it into heaven? Instead of saying that, he prevaricated, “I’m agnostic, so-”

“Doesn’t really matter,” she cut him off. “You can’t stay here.”

Wait. That seemed very authoritative for a kid in… the afterlife. “Why not?”

“To be blunt, I don’t really like you all that much,” she said. Okay, ouch, little girl. Then she added, “Although you’re slightly better than that other version, I suppose.”

He had no idea what that meant. But if her opinion mattered so much, who was she? 

Was she? 

No.

No way.

“Yeah,” he said slowly, “I’m not my biggest fan either. Or yours.” 

She gave him a flat look no actual preteen could manage, not until they were sixteen was that look of ‘ask me if I care’ perfected amongst actual kids.

Still, he had to ask: “But wait a minute. Aren’t you supposed to love all of us?”

God laughed at him. “Where’d you get that idea?”

Well, right on. Fuck organized religion. (He’d totally called it.)

She continued, “I need you so I can pick and choose. And you don’t rub me the right way. Too annoying.”

“Wait,” he said. She looked unimpressed, but oh well. He had God as a captive audience, so he was going there. “So you… you made us? You made me?”

He was going to ask ‘why’ but she cut him off. “Well, I made everything else, so I must’ve made you.”

Klaus couldn’t help but laugh. He’d totally called it! God was a woman!

Well, a preteen girl. A preteen  **_POC_ ** girl, to be precise, and fuck all the racists in the world that was actually awesome! (Tumblr would  _ break _ .)

(Although, it also explained why the world seemed  _ totally insane _ if it had been made by a twelve-year-old girl. He thought he  _ maybe  _ should have expected that.)

“Why?” She looked at him as though half suspicious and half resigned. “Do you have another idea?”

“Maybe. A couple,” he said. Sure, he’d had a few theories about existence in general and his in particular over the years, usually when he was high. “I don’t know.”

“Well, then, keep them to yourself,” God ordered. She softened slightly. “Time is flying. So hurry up. She’s waiting for you.”

Klaus rose slowly from where he’d crouched down to be at her eye-level at some point. If he was in heaven, and ‘she’ was waiting… then could it be?

“Who is?” he asked hoarsely.

She pointed off to Her left sharply. The only thing there was an awesome looking treehouse in the most enormous tree he’d ever seen that definitely hadn’t been in the middle of the flower field when he’d looked around before.

“Hurry up,” She told him. “Surprisingly, I actually like her; so don’t keep her waiting.”

Klaus gasped lightly, almost unwilling to believe it. He asked, “Vanya?”

God smiled mysteriously at him. Klaus smiled back and took off running for the treehouse, shouting Vanya’s name excitedly.

He climbed the ladder to the outside platform, threw open the bright red door, and stumbled to a halt just inside the treehouse. Woah.

He looked behind him, out at the sunny, if monochrome, flower field where God had disappeared… somewhere. Probably off to do Godly things. Then he looked back inside the treehouse which apparently held an enormous concert hall where the only lights were focused on the stage, and above the seats was a gigantic skylight that bathed the theater in moonlight.

Well, that was trippy as fuck.

“Hello?” Klaus called out as he entered the theater, looking around warily.

“Hi.”

His head jerked up and his breath caught in his throat. She was wearing an oversized off-white sweater over rich blue shirt that was just visible at the collar, and a pair of black jeans. Her shoes were black leather ankle boots without any heel to them. Her hair was as straight and long as he remembered, but her bangs were missing.

She still looked thirteen. But like a thirteen-year-old who had some choices.

“Vanya,” he whispered. Klaus staggered forward, feeling like he’d been shot again just looking at her. “Vanya.”

She stayed where she was but her small smile widened as he broke into a run to reach her. When he did, he swept her up into his arms, holding her tightly. She let out a noise of surprise and was frozen for a moment before slowly reaching her arms around him to hug him back.

He tried not to think of just how small she felt in his arms, how she was still a little girl while he was a grown man. About  _ why  _ his sister still looked like a little girl instead of a grown woman.

“Missed you,” he choked out. Vanya didn’t say anything in reply, but she tightened her grip on him and laid her head on his chest. 

After several long minutes, she moved as though trying to pull back. He held onto her even tighter, not wanting to ever let go. He’d let Vanya go once, pushing his concerns about her off and trying to pretend everything was fine and look at what had happened. 

Never again.

“Klaus,” Vanya said finally. 

Reluctantly he loosened his hold on her but refused to let her go completely. With a fondly exasperated look, she twined their fingers together and led him to a seat. He looked around while he did, taking in the beautiful and majestic theater they were in.

It was a concert hall, really. One he found vaguely familiar; like he’d been there before, once, a long, long time ago.

“Love what you’ve done with the place,” he poked at a plush red chair and looked up at the stage. 

It looked primed for a performance, with its rows of seats and music stands. The only instrument, though, was a pure white violin.

“It’s okay,” Vanya said, looking around herself. “It’s my reward… and my punishment.”

“Punishment?” Klaus sat up. “Who is punishing you? Was it that little girl God? Because if She’s punishing you then we are having words! I will not-”

Vanya had put a hand over his mouth, cutting him off. “I’m punishing me,” she told him, apparently attempting to explain.

He felt confused. Why would Vanya need to punish herself?

“Because I did something horrible,” she said. 

Oops, he hadn’t meant to say that out loud. He was more careful as he said, “Why do you need to punish yourself, you didn’t… okay, well, yes what happened was horrible, but I understand.” He cut himself off, took a deep breath, and said, “I grew up there, too, Vanya. I can’t pretend to understand what it was like to be you, but I wasn’t happy living there either. I can see why you… why you did what you did.”

“I committed suicide,” she said plainly, “I had my reasons.” 

She stared around the theater and, her hand still in his, she led him onto the stage to stare out at the rows of empty seats with her. Then, softly, she said, “This is a punishment because I’m finally able to perform to my fullest abilities, play like I never had before, take the first chair and excel beyond any measure. But there’s no one here to play with. No one to ever hear me play. I’m alone here. Like always.”

Klaus’s heart broke. “Vanya,” he whispered. 

She met his eyes with a small, sad smile. It’s too old, too lonely, too broken for such a little girl. (It’s the only way he ever remembered seeing Vanya smile.) 

He quickly cleared his throat and sat down in a chair on the stage. “I’m here now!” He enthused, “I haven’t heard you play in way too long! I’ve missed it, Vanya, missed hearing you play. Will you play for me now?”

She stared at him in surprise before a beaming smile crossed her face and she grabbed the beautiful white violin. “Okay,” she said, “but not for too long. I have something to tell you before you leave.”

‘Leave?’ Klaus wanted to ask her, but she’d already lifted her violin and bow to her chin, releasing the first note. He fell silent, not wanting to interrupt. He’d never heard this song before, it hadn’t been one she’d played for him when they were both children.

It was pretty and emotionally charged but, beyond that, he knew shit about classical music and couldn’t tell you much. He knew, though, that Vanya had played brilliantly, beautifully.  _ Perfectly _ . 

(At least to him, she had. She always had, even when her music was more squeaks and squeals than notes, he’d loved to hear her play.)

“Bravo! Magnifique! Encore!” Klaus leaped to his feet to applaud raucously when her bow stilled at long last. He did so noisily and with great enthusiasm; a way he’d never have dared to when he was young, too worried Dad would come and take away the few moments of solace he found listening to Vanya’s violin rather than the ghosts.

“Maybe in a bit,” she said, placing her bow and violin on an empty chair. “First, I need to tell you something.”

Something about the way she said it sent chills up his spine. He asked hoarsely, “Vanya?”

“Klaus,” she returned evenly, sitting on the chair beside him and lacing their fingers together again, “what I’m about to tell you… you can’t tell anyone about. Not yet.”

Klaus swallowed his uneasiness and joked, “Have you met me? Keeping quiet isn’t exactly my strength.”

“You can’t tell anyone until April 2nd, 2019, Klaus. The fate of the world depends on it,” Vanya’s eyes were piercing. 

The shy, meek little girl vanished for a moment to reveal a woman with nerves of steel and more power in her pinky than Klaus and the rest of his siblings had combined. Klaus blinked and Vanya was back, looking as she always had (always would. Although the wardrobe update was nice. It suited her.)

But what she’d said… she’d said it so seriously he couldn’t bring himself to make another joke. “Okay,” he said quietly, “I won’t tell anyone, Vanya, I promise.”

She nodded and repeated, “Not until April 2nd, 2019.”

“I swear I won’t tell anyone anything you say until April 2nd, 2019,” Klaus vowed.

She turned to look at him fully, sitting cross-legged on her chair. Klaus folded himself into the same position as best he could, but he was a six-foot-tall man and she was a tiny teenage girl who wasn’t even five-foot so he was sure it looked somewhat comical.

Vanya took both his hands in hers and gave him her sad smile. She said softly, “It’s a good thing you write ghost stories because I’m going to tell you mine. You can write it if you want, but… but I.” She fell silent for a moment before changing the topic. 

“Our story begins on October 1st, 1989 when forty-three women who hadn’t been pregnant when the day began simultaneously gave birth to children with unique powers,” Vanya began to speak.

  
  


When Klaus woke up in a hospital bed, Dave and Carrie were hovering nearby while Ben slept slumped over in the chair beside him, the first words out of his mouth were: “Holy shit, I’m never looking at violins the same way again.” 

“Oh, thank God,” Dave said. Carrie didn’t say anything but the look on her face was pure relief. Apparently, she was happy he was alive. He had the best ghosts.

He looked at his brother and shook his shoulder, “Ben… Ben, Ben, Ben!”

Ben blinked awake next to him. He stared blearily at Klaus who gazed back at him. He was definitely half-asleep because it took him a minute to register Klaus’s own awake state. (But Ben was alive, oh thank the Tween in the Sky, he was alive and, for some reason, not in London.)

“You’re awake!” Ben exclaimed, a small smile on his face. 

“I need to see the moon,” Klaus replied.

He was a bit surprised; that was more emotion than he’d seen from his brother in years. (Oh, Ben.)

At Ben’s blank stare, ah, a return to normalcy, he added, “Right now. Moon, go now. The big white round thing in the sky at night.”

“It’s mid-afternoon,” Dave told him.

Klaus swore loudly. “Damn it.” 

He started coughing and choking, finally registering how dry his mouth was and then how much pain he was in. Making the universal sign for something to drink, Ben handed over a cup of water. The pain Ben couldn’t help with. And it wasn’t like if he called a nurse it would get any better. Thanks to some addiction issues in his teens (which had been helped by leaving Daddy dearest’s humble abode and his siblings guilting him into rehab so ‘another of their siblings didn’t die’) he had it noted that he couldn’t take narcotics on his medical records. So he was stuck with the fucking pain.

“Thanks,” he told Ben. “Okay… so no moon.” He pondered on that for a moment. Before deciding to make someone take him that night. 

Klaus decided to change the subject. “Well, do I have a story for you guys! I saw Vanya!” Cue complete chaos from both the living and the dead. And then he remembered. So after they had all finally stopped talking over one another, he added morosely, “Only, I can’t tell you anything she said until April 2nd, 2019. I promised.”

There was even more chaos after that. Ben kept asking questions in his usual calm, sedated way, but Klaus still got all worked up and excited. Eventually, he got loud enough trying to tell Ben everything without breaking his promise that a nurse came and kicked Ben out, yelling at him about disturbing Klaus’s rest and not reporting that he’d woken up. 

Too bad she’d kicked out the only calm person in the room with him. And that she couldn’t kick Dave, Carrie, and the innumerable ghosts in the hospital that were actually getting him worked up out, too.

Oh well. It was kind of fun knowing something everyone else didn’t.

And he’d really enjoyed seeing Vanya again. As he settled back on his bed and ignored the ghost of a gangbanger wailing and trying to hold his intestines in at the foot of his bed he smiled. He’d always miss her, but he’d see her again someday - as a ghost or from his own death, it didn’t matter. Klaus would see Vanya again.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the delay, people, real life can be a drag. I'm still working on this series, I promise!


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